Special note
Tony LeSauteur
It was while
reading George Francis
Le Feuvre's book,
Jèrri Jadis, that I realised just how important the presence of
my Jersey ancestors had been on
the Gaspé Coast. Which is why I took the time to translate this Jersey language account of his last tour of the Gaspé
Coast, which he made during the middle of the 1960s. A true Jerseyman,
from the Channel Islands, George Le Feuvre himself, declared
that, on this last pilgrimage, his goal was to contact
the largest possible number of families of Jersey origin,
and collect, from Gaspé citizens, born in the Channel Islands,
all the information they could recall of the old days. This
is how I came to understand how much Jersey men and
women have contributed in the making of this region.
The fact that Québec historians have
come, in modern days, to spontaneously describe my
Jersey ancestors as British because they came from Jersey
or Guernesey, then believed to be "British possessions", or
because they were of Anglican faith, is, to me, highly irritating. It
shows so very little knowledge of the history of Jersey
and of the Jersey people of the Gaspé Coast. Let's hope
George Le Feuvre's accounts will make them understand that
my grandfather, a Jerseyman from the Gaspé Coast,
was, like all Jersey people of the Coast and like most French Canadians,
of true French descent. He was a Norman
through and through!
